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Another unelected judge has decided they run the executive branch. A Biden-appointed federal judge just blocked the Trump administration from enforcing return-to-office requirements for Pentagon employees—and every other federal worker across the government, as detailed in the preliminary injunction issued by Judge William Alsup.
Judge William Alsup, sitting in San Francisco, issued a preliminary injunction claiming the administration couldn’t force civilian Defense Department employees back to their desks. But he didn’t stop there. The ruling extends government-wide, preventing the Office of Personnel Management from directing agencies to recall remote workers to their posts, according to the court documents from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
Think about what this means. The President of the United States, constitutionally charged with running the executive branch, can’t tell his own employees to show up for work. A single district judge in California has decided that the administrative state answers to him, not to the voters who elected Trump to drain the swamp, as evidenced by the injunction’s broad scope.
The administration had been pushing to end the pandemic-era work-from-home arrangements that have become permanent fixtures for thousands of federal employees. Taxpayers have been footing the bill for empty office buildings while bureaucrats collect full salaries from their kitchen tables, a policy Trump campaigned on reversing based on his public statements during the election. Voters gave him a mandate to do exactly that.
But the judicial resistance continues. This is the same playbook we’ve seen for months—activist judges in blue districts issuing nationwide injunctions to stop the administration’s agenda before it can even get started. Immigration enforcement? Blocked. Spending cuts? Halted. Now basic personnel management? Forbidden, as seen in similar rulings from federal courts.
The administration will undoubtedly appeal, but the damage is done. Every day these injunctions remain in place is another day the administrative state operates as an unaccountable fiefdom, insulated from the democratic process and the President the Constitution puts in charge of it.
When did we decide that district judges get veto power over the executive branch? And how many more mandates from the American people will be nullified by judicial fiat before something gives?
Providence watches over the bold.
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